Intercultural and Intergeneration Communication within the Chinese American Families

In recent decades, migration waves have brought to the United States large numbers of Asians and Pacific Islanders (API). Well over two-fifths of all non-amnesty persons admitted in the U.S. in 1991 were API.[i] The trend of increasing API immigration is clear and the API portion in the U S. total immigration steadily grew from the 1972's 28.7 percent to 1985's 44.2 percent. According to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2003, 25% of the Asians are foreign born. APIs were identified as language minorities; by 1989, the number had reached 547,000 (National Center for Education Statistics. 1992) With their drastically different cultural backgrounds, cross-cultural communication is a fundamental issue not only in API family but espeically in the Chinese American families, not to mention inter-generation communication. Chinese American families have distinct communication norms that are significantly different from those of native born Americans and other immigrants.

Most of the Chinese immigrants are from three regions in Asia, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Though they are all ethnically Chinese, some of the cultures and traditions are different in different regions, not to mention that the languages are different. Chinese from Hong Kong use Cantonese as the main dialect whereas China and Taiwan use mainly Mandarin and many local dialects. The written languages are also slightly different between Chinese from Hong Kong and Taiwan to those from mainland China. Historical trend has been that early Chinese immigrants came from pre-Communist China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong and were literate in traditional characters. Over the last two decades, however, Mainland China has become the dominant point of origin for Chinese immigrants. The younger generation of Chinese immigrants received their education in simplified characters. Many of them cannot read traditional characters at all. Those who can read traditional characters are middle-aged or older, or are highly-educated people.[ii]

Historically, under the influence of Chinese Confucianism, Chinese developed complex literate cultures and cohesive family organizations.[iii] Cultural contrasts are, of course, sharpest between Chinese and American mainstream society. For example, Chinese think about social institutions such as school quite differently from American parents. Like middle-class Americans, Chinese highly value formal education and life skills like playing some form of musical instruments. They often consider their children's schooling directly related to the family's integrity: success in academics brings honor and prestige to the family, failure brings shame.[iv] The intense pressure upon children to succeed often generates intergenerational conflicts and psychological difficulties for children. Many Chinese children suffer from test anxiety, social isolation, and impaired self-esteem because of their mediocre school performance.[v] Another source of family tension is the communication barrier between predominantly Chinese speaking parents and predominantly English speaking children.[vi]

Language differences are striking between Chinese and American mainstream society even for persons that are fluent in both languages. For example, translated documents or verbal language presented many identified problems. These include syntactic structure (question vs. statement) problem which Chinese translation lacks consistency in translating the document. Or key words in the English language were mistranslated. The Chinese translation either uses a word that differs in its semantic coverage from the original English word or collapses two concepts into one word. There is also the difference between classical Chinese vs. vernacular Chinese. The written form of a language is always considered more formal than the spoken form. Finally, some concepts are difficult to convey in another...

YOU MAY ALSO FIND THESE DOCUMENTS HELPFUL

...﻿
Marriages & Families
1. There are three common characteristics that would impact types of marriages that have on family definitions. Monogamous, polygamous, and arranged marriages. Monogamous is where the family stays out of the decision. Polygamous is where they have multiple options, which is illegal in the US. This type of marriage finds it ok to have multiple families. Arranged marriages are where the family of...

...﻿Nathan Logan
COM/360
University of Phoenix
Integrative InterculturalCommunication Paper
In today’s global business world society and the workplace are changing in many important ways. One of the most visible and perhaps most important ways is the increasing diversity. This offers us challenges as well as opportunities. Recently, the concept of interculturalcommunication in global business has completely witnessed a fundamental...

...﻿Full name: Hoàng Thị Thanh Thủy Class: 12E19
Topic: Intra/cross/intercultural material analysis
Material: The Pursuit of Happyness
Link: http://phim3s.net/phim-le/muu-cau-hanh-phuc_7036/xem-phim/184058/
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS FEATURES AMERCAN VALUES
As a nation of immigrants with remarakble ethnic diversity, the United States is discribed not only as heterogeneous “salad bowl” but also homogenizing “melting pot”....

...Yevgeniya Zhdanova.
Interculturalcommunication.
Learning diary.
Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.
Mahatma Gandhi.
Culture is complex, abstract and pervasive matrix of social elements that functions as an all-encompassing form or pattern for living by laying a predictable world in which an individual is firmly oriented. Culture is individual and universal! This is a very complex concept that...

...﻿·The Course Paper for InterculturalCommunication
Confucianism versus Ancient Greek Philosophy: Pragmatism and Love of Wisdom
_____________________________________________________________________
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to trace the source of the various values in contemporary society of China and the West, and highlight the influences of philosophy on people’s thoughts and ideas. People from China and those from West World have entirely...

...don’t have a culture”. Until I have read the first chapter of the book InterculturalCommunication: Globalization and Social Justice by Kathryn Sorrell, I began to think more deeply about this concept, about my cultural identity and positionality. My view about culture became broaden when I learned about the definition of culture which is a site of shared meaning, of contested meaning, and a resource. To me, interculturalcommunication...

...Interculturalcommunication
In this assignment we discover some of the aspects of interculturalcommunication such as: the reasons for the increase in intercultural, the differences between cultures in nonverbal cues, the likeness of ethical norms between cultures, the definition of cultural homogenization and the need for community building between cultures.
The major reasons that intercultural...

...﻿Introduction
The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the importance of intercultural negotiation, and the reasons hereof. Equally so, it is to explain the differences between two closely linked concepts, namely international negotiations and intercultural negotiations. An account of Bülow and Kumar’s (2011) objections about the relevance of national culture is presented, and finally, the concepts of conflicting findings, imprecision in terminology and...